New Trade Frontier: Asia Pacific Region

The Asia-Pacific region gains significant economic prominence as the rich world’s fiscal austerity intensifies and economic contraction threatens even some of Europe’s biggest economies and slowing emerging economies provide less of a cushion for global growth.

Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation November 11th, 2011 meeting held in Honolulu Hawaii, is a positive move forward in achieving the cooperation among 21 Asia-Pacific economies to develop ambitious approaches to economic challenges ahead. Asia-Pacific markets are large and expanding; APEC, the implementation of the U.S.-Korea trade agreement, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks are pillars of the U.S. strong and smart trade engagement in the region. The eight countries joining the U.S. in the zone would be Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

Leaders of the Asian Pacific countries agreed to take concrete steps toward building a “seamless regional economy” that will generate growth in three priority areas: strengthening regional economic integration and expanding trade, promoting green growth, and advancing regulatory convergence and cooperation.

Economies agreed to help small and medium-sized enterprises grow and better plug into global production chains. Breaking down barriers U.S. SME’s exporters face across the Asia-Pacific that includes customs delays and supporting them better protect their intellectual property are crucial to have them integrate fully into the region’s economy. Specifically we look to:

Address tariff and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services.

Adopt policies that promote effective innovation by encouraging competition and open markets.

Improve the quality of regulatory systems and better align the U.S. regulatory approaches.

Encourage APEC to be laboratory for some of the best and newest ideas in global commerce.

The Asia Pacific region is the current bright spot for the U.S to capitalize in tapping to the enormous base of potential growing consumers, increasing exports and creating jobs in the economy.